"Lightsomeness" Quotes from Famous Books
... strain so sad? Couldst thou not stamp thy joy on human life? Yea, even the saddest life has many joys. Couldst thou not stamp thy joy upon the page, That they who should come after thee might feel Their spirits gladdened by it, and their hearts Made lighter with thy lightsomeness? For thou, They say, wert joyous as a summer bird, The very light and life of those who knew thee— Oh! why, then, is thy song so sad? 'Tis wrong, 'Tis surely wrong, to spend in fond complainings The talents given for nobler purposes; And he who goes about this world of ours Diffusing cheerfulness ... — The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sensibility; proud, and gifted (probably by the circumstances in which he was placed) with an energy which the softness and impressibility of his nature needed.—As for the little girl, all the squalor of the abode served but to set off her lightsomeness and brightsomeness. She was a pale, large-eyed little thing, and it might have been supposed that the air of the house and the contiguity of the burial-place had a bad effect upon her health. Yet I hardly think this could have been the case, for she was of a very airy nature, dancing and sporting ... — Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... request was granted, granted with that whole-hearted allegiance and entire docility, with a tenderness of eye and lightsomeness of demeanour, that made her perceive that this young man had not been so obdurate as he appeared, and that her efforts to appease him had been out of proportion to what ... — What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... for herself, amid circumstances so stern as those which surrounded the mistress of the house; and also by the effect which she produced on a character of so much more mass than her own. For the gaunt, bony frame and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny lightsomeness of Phoebe's figure, were perhaps in some fit proportion with the moral weight and substance, respectively, of the woman ... — The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne |